Syrian regime forced 130,000 to leave homes in 2018

By Adham Kako

ANKARA

Syria's Assad regime and its allies have forced approximately 130,000 people to migrate -- through fierce attacks and blockades -- from cities it captured this year.

On the occasion of International Migrants Day (Dec. 18), Anadolu Agency collected data from local sources that suggests that 2018 -- for Syrians -- would be remembered as a year of displacement and forced migration.

Although opposition-held areas of Damascus, Homs, Daraa and Quneitra were all designated "de-escalation zones" (in line with earlier agreements signed in Astana), this did not stop the regime from attacking and blockading them, and forcing numerous residents to leave their homes.

Syrians in these regions who remain opposed to the regime were relocated to refugee camps in the country’s north, where they continue to face difficult living conditions.

According to data collected by the Syria Intervention Coordinators, a local NGO devoted to helping civilians, the regime and its allies have forced as many as 128,926 people to leave their homes in the period from March 14 of this year to July 31.

80,000 leave capital

This year’s forced evacuations first began in the period from March 14 to May 10, when Syrians in Damascus' Eastern Ghouta, Eastern Qalamun, Qadem, Yelda, Babila, and Beit Sahm were relocated.

Almost 74,000 people in Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, and Eastern Qalamun near the Lebanese border (regarded as a symbol of anti-regime resistance) were forcibly relocated to opposition-held safe zones in Aleppo and Idlib.

With another 9,250 relocated from the opposition-held Yarmouk Camp's Yelde, Yelda, Babila and Beit Sham settlements, the total number of those forced to leave opposition-held areas of Damascus this year has now reached 83,214.

35,000 leave Homs

Once the forced evacuations in Damascus were completed, the Syrian regime and its allies then targeted Syria’s central city of Homs.

Following a lengthy blockade, 35,648 local residents were forced to leave rural areas of northern Homs to opposition-held areas in Idlib and Aleppo in the period from May 7 to 18.

The cities of Daraa and Quneitra, meanwhile, fell entirely under the regime’s control in the wake of the evacuations.

Opposition groups and civilians who continued to oppose the regime in Daraa and Quneitra were also forced to relocate to northern Syria.

In line with an involuntary evacuation agreement, more than 10,000 people were forced to leave their homes during the period from July 15 to 31.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the seven-year-long Syria conflict has left some 6.6 million people internally displaced and another 5.6 million seeking refugee status abroad.

Regime stops returnees

Aiming to turn the situation in its favor, the Assad regime is now trying to prevent millions of people from returning to their homes by severing their organic link with Syria.

With this aim in mind, the regime has continued to confiscate -- or simply demolish -- properties left behind by those who have been forcibly relocated.

In April, the regime implemented a housing law, known as “Law 10”, according to which it has the right to nationalize the property or assets of anyone who has failed to claim them within a one-year period.

In mid-October, Human Rights Watch said that satellite images had shown regime forces demolishing property without giving prior notice or offering compensation.

*Ali Murat Alhas contributed to this report from Ankara